A Note About This Edition

THIS BOOK DIFFERES IN A NUMBER OF WAYS from earlier editions of The Birds of America and from John James Audubon’s original, massive Double Elephant Folio, the heaviest volume of which weighs 56 pounds. These plates are organized not in the order that Audubon produced them for his subscribers but phylogenetically; that is, in a modern scientific classification sequence that somewhat parallels the evolutionary history of a genetically related group of organisms—from the most primitive living examples to the most recently evolved—in this case going from loons to sparrows and buntings. The numbering of our plates roughly follows the sequence of orders, families, and species in the Checklist of North American Birds prepared by the American Ornithologists’ Union, as adapted and updated by the American Birding Association, but only roughly, as there have been many minor changes in sequence since 1981 when this book was first published. However, all common and scientific names are up to date as of 1990. It is instructive to see the bird paintings grouped in this manner, to compare Audubon’s handling of closely related species and to note that he sometimes repeated a typical pose, as in his storm-petrels, rails, and warblers.

In the Appendix, we have included a two-way Concordance relating our numbers to the numbering of plates in the original Elephant Folio—as well as an Index to the birds illustrated.

The plates are captioned with each bird’s currently accepted vernacular name, followed in brackets by Audubon’s identification (in original spelling and capitalization) when it differs. In addition, each plate carries the bird’s scientific classification by order, family, and species. The narrative captions grouped at the beginning of each chapter are illustrated by thumbnail images of the plates for ease of reference, but no attempt has been made to give well-rounded summaries of life histories, habits, or ranges of each bird; such information can be found in more extended form in any number of standard bird books.

In this volume we have concentrated on faithfully reproducing the art and on Audubon himself, quoting some of the more intriguing passages from his Ornithological Biography, which accompanied the Elephant Folio, and from his octavo edition of Birds of America, published several years later. We frequently have drawn comparisons between the attitudes toward birds that prevailed in Audubon’s time and the changes that have taken place in the succeeding century and a half, much of it set in motion by the great Audubon movement that bears his name. Many species of birds are less numerous today than they were then, due to persecution from which they never fully recovered and, perhaps more significantly, from subsequent attrition or loss of habitat.

Another feature of this edition of Birds of America is its full-color illustrated survey, in the Introduction, of the work of other major North American bird artists and illustrators (many fine European artists are excluded by the book’s scope), from Mark Catesby and Alexander Wilson, who preceded Audubon, to the growing number of bird portraitists who have come on the scene since. Of those who painted birds prior to 1930, we can be certain of only two—Audubon and Louis Agassiz Fuertes—whose work will be remembered centuries hence. As for the hundreds who have painted birds since 1930, most of them still living and improving their skills, it is too early to assess their durability (or possible immortality) in the evolution of bird art.